Employment News and Comment

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Travelling
time from home to customers’ premises is ‘working time’ under the Working Time
Directive.

Tyco’s
technicians install and maintain security equipment at customers’
premises. They travel from their homes
to the customers’ locations in the province or provinces of Spain allocated to
them. They use company vehicles. Each evening they are told via their mobile
phones which customers they are to visit the following day. At the end of each
day they have to report back, via their phones, on their work that day.

Tyco refused to treat travelling time from home to customers’
premises as working time. It treated daily working time as the time between
arrival at the first customer and departure from the last. Spanish law
permitted them to do this, on the basis that workers are free to decide where
they live and therefore the worker alone decides on the extent of their
travelling time. That argument clearly does not apply if the employer decides
where the worker is to travel to. Tyco argued that the travelling time was a
rest period and not ‘working time’ because the technicians were not carrying
out any installations or maintenance during those periods.

The CJEU disagreed. Travelling time satisfied all the parts of
the definition of working time. The
workers were at their employer’s disposal because the employers determined where
they were to travel to; and they were carrying out their activities and duties
because travelling to customers’ premises was a necessary part of the work of
installing and maintaining equipment. So
travelling time was covered by the Directive.